Craig Raine (Born 1944)

British poet, essayist, novelist and editor, born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, educated
at Exeter College, Oxford.. The Onion Memory (1978), his first collection of poems, made his
name.
A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979), earned him his reputation as the best-known
exponent of the Martian school of poetry. Term coined by James Fenton in an article called Of
the Martian School (1978); it derives from Raines poem A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
in which he presented things as seen through the eyes of an alien. Here are some passages from
that poem:
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
And rests its soft machine on ground :
Then the world is dim and bookish
Like engravings under tissue paper.
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.
At night when all the colours die,
They hide themselves in pairs
And read about themselves
In colour, with their eyelids shut.
Martian School: emerged in the 1970s. Leading members: Raine and Reid.
Short-lived school. Yet great impact: much imitated style. Use of clever, witty visual images.
Aimed to defamiliarise the familiar. Everyday objects and experiences are presented as if for the
first time. As Fenton argued, they taught us to become strangers in our familiar world, to
release the faculty of perception and allow it to graze at liberty in the field of experience
Shocking metaphors and similes that look like riddles.
.Keen on wordplay and rrony.
.Playful, humorous tone.

Christopher Reid (born 1949)

Poet, journalist, editor. Born in Hong Kong, and studied at Oxford
University. Often associated with the Martian school of poetry. Witty style,
shocking and charming images. In some critics view, mistakenly. One of
the most singular poets in contemporary British poetry.
Won the 1980 Somerset Maugham Award and the Hawthornden Prize for his first poetry
collection, Arcadia (1979). Also written two poetry books for children: All Sorts (1999)
and Alphabicycle Order (2001).
Also a master of the dramatic monologue, most particularly in his collection Katerina
Brac (1985
The author of some versions of poems by Gautier, Verlaine and Hugo.